Now for the most difficult part. The politics of Wikipedia, in which there are many paradoxes. Jimmy is an 'Objectivist', and many of the people who he assembled around him in the early days at Bomis were from the Objectivist mailing list.

An Objectivist (as I understand) is an extreme form of Right wing-ism. They are followers of Ayn Rand, who believed that history is determined by a small number of remarkable and intelligent individuals who by strength of personality and intelligence and good-lookingness make lots of money and become rich. They can only do this in America. No one in Europe has heard of Objectivism.

However, Wikipedia grew up rapidly after July 2001, when people like The Cuncator joined from Slashdot. Slashdot (as explained to me by Eric) is a website almost entirely populated by devotees of Linux and the 'open software movement'. This is a sort of ideology of crowdsourcing, which elevates the mob, and not the individual, to a position of supreme importance. It is a form of Leftism (although it is also a form of free-marketism, which is not really a form of Leftism at all). Furthermore, the general politics of Wikipedia is left-leaning.

How do we explain this paradox? Is it really a paradox?

This is important but it is an area of discussion that I have found to the most difficult to make any headway with people on WR even prior to this site's domination by unredeemed Wikipedians. It is not an accident or mere irony that Mr. Wales is Randoid and gave birth to Wikipedia the great "Collaborative Encyclopedia." The prevalent rightism of the Wikipeian community is not just the fact that demographically speaking the internet is Ron Paul country. Wikipedia especially, and to some extent all of free culture and open source projects, are consistent with a Randoid worldview. Wiki "collaboration" is not collaboration at all. It contains no true cooperation and is in fact hostile to cooperation. It is a chain of discreet individual choices meant to simulate an Randian free market via the edit button. It is driven by the assumption some invisible hand will shape all of these contending individual actions into a higher truth. All true collaboration, which requires discussion, debate and democratically arrived synthesis that is finally implemented through planning is antithetical to the basic ideology that lies behind the project and which permeates the very code of the software. That Wikipedia has some elements of dispute resolution and discussion is a grudging and un-admitted concession to the reality that this free hand approach does not work.

This is why such disruption and hysteria arises whenever Wikipedia's community comes into contact with social forces outside the project in areas such as child protection, pornography and accommodating the need of outside communities such as was the case in the images of Mohammed matter. The Randoid rightism of narrow selfishness is unleashed in full force for all the world to see. It is always interesting to see Mr. Wales cringe at these times. Concessions to "community discussion" on the site, even under Randiod rule exposes the cracks in his flawed dystopia. At times like this he probably most longs for his original vision...himself a Godking who grants his subjects only the freedom of the edit button.

Sectarian American leftists of thirty years ago had a saying "Left in form Right in substance" which describes the situation on Wikipedia nicely. Wkipedians might consider themselves to represent a broad spectrum of political viewpoint, even if tilted toward the Paul and Randoid views. Most see themselves as some variant of "social liberal" and some even espouse leftism, usually of boutique brands of the "left libertarian" or "anarcho-syndicalist" mold. They tend to get upset when they are shown to be Randoid dupes. So good luck with that.

Intelligent discussion returns to WR, for a bit. OK, but if I may play devil's advocate, how do you explain the posts below, all by Jimmy?

Of course, I can see how the bit about 'reason' (my bold) is consistent with Rand, since she paid at least lip service to 'reason'.

A thoughtful conversation at last. IMHO the real paradox is that the key NPOV rule exists, but nobody or hardly anybody applies the letter and spirit of that rule. If they did so, all the ostensibly left-right content issues, and the fractiousness and unpleasantness that accompany them at WP would probably not arise. Problem is, NPOV is almost invariably interpreted at WP as meaning "the mainstream" POV, with no no room for "minority" or dissenting POVs. What might be "fringe" or "mainstream" in one country is not necessarily so in another. And so on. NPOV encyclopedic content, if it is to be truly encyclopedic, must accommodate sensibily all significant viewpoints, regardless of whether they're "left" or "right" or whatever. Perhaps wikipedians just don't understand what NPOV means, in which case the NPOV rule should be re-written in language so simple and lucid that even a 10-year-old can understand it. I suspect, however, that many wikipedians do in fact understand the rule perfectly well, but simply refuse to apply it, using a range of other rules to overturn the NPOV. Perhaps all the rules need to be rewritten and simplified to the extent that one rule cannot be used to invalidate another, which is often the case. It's a systemic paradox.

Above all, proper application of the NPOV rule requires real editing skill, of which there's virtually none at WP, contrary to the prevailing myth that "anyone can edit".

I feel that the ideology that best describes the one behind Wikipedia is what Utilitarians and Nihilists call "Crowdism":

http://www.amerika.org/social-reality/the-...ology-of-a-mob/

http://www.corrupt.org/about/

http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/crowdism/

I think what best describes what's behind WP is that which Adolf Hitler referred to when he remarked: "How lucky for rulers that men do not think." Or how about Albert Einstein: "Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."

For the hard core Wikipedians that actually run the place, it's all about gaming the system, which means that the "invisible hand" actually belongs to you and your buddies, if you are on the winning team.

I think that "left" and "right" should be discarded as functionally useless terms. It was already understood in Plato's time that anarchic or "libertarian" impulses converge on totalitarianism, which seems paradoxical to people who are attracted to simple formulae. The alternative is a constitutional republic premised on certain agreed-upon philosophical objectives, which for Randroids of all persuasions is totally unacceptable. Instead, Wikipedia is based upon a list of policies which are treated as a Lockean "social contract," which establishes a system that is ready to be gamed.

As one attracted, even addicted to simple formulae, I would ask to to run that past me again. How can anarchic impulses converge upon totalitarianism?

It's a pendulum effect -- the anarchoids create enough chaos that there is a general hue and cry for order, at which point a man on a white horse arrives and promises order if he is simply given absolute authority. After a while people chafe under his yoke, and the anarchoid impulses resume. It's difficult to break out of this cycle; it requires some very thoughtful, disciplined and persistent leaders, like Benjamin Franklin.

ah that would be Plato then. I'm with you.

Since nobody can agree as to just what "anarchy" means, that's hard to say. In one sense, "goverment" is impossible to get rid of, since in any society somebody (or some group) will always be better armed than everybody else (as a matter of logic) and that person or group can be easily regarded as the defacto government, since they win all political arguments (or at least do not loose any, since the first argument would be to remove their weapons, which they naturally would refuse to do lest they lose all the next ones, which would degenerate to removing their property next, and make them slaves). Government is that which resists all attempted political control from without. What else would you call it? If The State cannot force me to do something, then I have become my own State.

"Anarchy" is a rather oxymoronic idea, rather like free will, square circles, compassionate god, and so on. It's probably best not to use it. Or even think about it, except in deciding it's best not to use it.

It is an error to attempt to place fringe philosophies on a right-left spectrum. Objectivism is a fringe philosophy that rejects many of the principles that the mainstream accepts, and is therefore too far off the beaten track to meaningfully fall into the right-left spectrum.

Objectivists, fundamentally, are narcissists bordering on solipists. Objectivists generally support totalitarianism because they believe that their inherent superiority (every Objectivist I have ever meant has the firm, unshakeable conviction that they are categorically well above average) will ensure that they will be in the ruling caste, where the strict regulation of the rabble will protect their property, while at the same time giving them absolute freedom to do as they please without repercussion. The key characteristic of Objectivism, from what I've seen, seems to be this belief that there is a near-speciation of humanity: the rabble, who deserve nothing, and the elite, who deserve absolute freedom. Note that they won't admit this, and will object to it strenuously if you say it, but nonetheless they all believe it.

Of course, if you believe that you're a member of a small elite that is, by virtue of innate superiority, naturally entitled to rule, you're going to be very prone to favor totalitarianism, as long as you're the ruler....

Roe might be surprised to learn that the WP "Anarchism" article (edited presumably by knowledgeable anarchists) is in fact one of the most (perhaps the only) comparatively conflict-free political topic at WP. Perhaps Roe should read it, seeing as he currently doesn't seem to have a clue what anarchism actually means (in the classical, not perjorative, sense of the term).

I think you're right on that (*). I found it amusing how the Occupy Wall Street folks now are dealing with the people who don't care about the "movement" coming down and partaking of the free food, sex, and drugs.

And even those who do believe that anarchism is a valid topic generally agree that it isn't "right" or "left".

(*) Except for the free will part. Could you explain (or point me to an explanation of) why free will is oxymoronic?

Well this thread is certainly progressing in a predictable direction. The Tea Party is the same as Occupy Wall Street. Politics are an illusion. Nothing to see here.

That's because we have a surplus of people here who can only see political philosophy in binary: "Mine", and "Not mine". Lots and lots of that going on above.

I'm not sure why you presume the anarchism article is edited by knowledgeable anarchists, nor why that would make any difference.

Just reading the first few sentences of the anarchism article it's plain to see that it isn't going to help one figure out what anarchism actually means. " generally defined"..."or alternatively"..."many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive"..."supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism".



I can never tell if "GlassBeadGame" is being sarcastic or serious, but as for seeing political philosophy in binary, that's because it is binary. It only takes a single contradiction to collapse an entire logical system.

Go with that first one.

Jeez, what next. Never heard of dialectics? Clearly not.

Actually, Bead, the Tea Party is the same as Occupy Wall Street. Remember that originally the Tea Party issues were the bailout, and then Obamacare (which is also the bailout.) They were a bunch of naive persons with no political acumen to speak of, so they were soon bought up by the Republicans and began shouting for austerity. However, many of them have now had a taste of austerity themselves and they don't like it, so they are attending the OWS rallies (there were 1000 of the across the country on Friday.) Of course, the OWS people are also naive and lacking in political acumen, but they have the benefit of input from the LaRouchistas and have consequently adopted Glass-Steagall as their main policy objective. Now we're getting somewhere.

You mean that book about Xenu, the dictator of the Galactic Confederacy who, 75 million years ago, brought billions of his people to Earth in a DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs?

You're right, it doesn't make any difference. My obscure point was one of irony. An article about anarchism is where you would reasonably expect the talk pages to be completely anarchic, i.e. conflict ridden, yet in fact they're quite polite by comparison with most if not all other politically charged topics at WP (and at WR as well, come to think of it).

The mother of all ironies though, is Jimbo's absurd assertion that WP is "non-hierarchical" -- absence of hierarchy being of course a fundamental principle of classical anarchism. Now there's a paradox for you ...

Hey, you sure are one cynical guy. That's what comes from reading too much Herman Hesse. Try Oscar Wilde instead; his definition of a cynic: someone "who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Definition of a communist/leftist: person who thinks they know the "true value" of anything, completely regardless of its market value.

Needless to say these people don't do too well in the real world, and are ususally angry about it. You'd think they'd make good "value investors" (investors who win by buying market-undervalued securities). Strangely, they don't.

Related to this you can tell a leftist by the fact that they always insist that people get what they NEED, and not what they WANT. Hidden in this is the idea that people don't always want what they need, and need a leftist to decide the matter FOR them, rather like a child.

Suppose you can duplicate this universe, down to the last detail. If you look at two identical people in idential universes, you have only two possibilities, by virtue of the excluded middle that occurs between complete determinism and partial randomness:

The possibilities are:

[1] Comparable people will make the same decissions when faced with the same facts and having had the same meals and feeling the same way. This is a totally mechanical situation. If you could freeze one universe for a minute, you could have one universe running ahead of the other, and you could use one to predict what would happen in the other a minute later, and never be wrong.

In such a universe it's difficult to see why anybody should be held responsible for any decision they make. Every person makes a "first decision" after starting from an embryo, and that decision is evidently a purely mechanical one. And if the first one is mechanical, the second one must be also, since it depends on externals plus the result of decision #1. It is foregone. Everything a person does is thus foregone right from the zygote stage.

[2] The universes diverge (slowly or more quickly-- it doesn't matter for us) due to some taint of random factor that enters into decision-making, even with the same ingredients. This will get to the point that person A in one universe commits a serious crime while his counterpart in universe B decides not to. Again, this is not totally mechanical/deterministic, but it's hard to see how anybody can be fairly held responsible for any decision. How can you hold somebody responsible for dice being thrown by atoms in his brain? The dice could have gone some other way, and he's not responsible for THAT.

"Free-will" is a term invented by people who do not like [1] totally mechanical universe, and also don't like [2] partly randomized universe. But there isn't any alternative, as these take care of all possibilities.

I read it. And since it doesn't agree with itself, I still don't have an answer. Thus, what I said at first (that anarchy has no good definition and is oxymoronic) stands. Some of the definitions of "anarchy" even are defined as "rule by X" where X is somebody or something. Oxymoron. You cannot define an anarchist by what kind of government or state they are against. What sort of society do they offer in its place? Usually there is no answer. The simple quiestion of "who uses land" has no answer. "Anybody who wants to" has no answer since it has no answer to disputes.

If you want a shock, check out the wiki on anarchy which explores reality, vs. the theoretical and idealistic anarchism, which is wanking of the first-order.

BTW, if the anarchy the page is conflict-free it's because they gave everybody space to put down their favorite idea of anarchy, or that of their favorite "anarchist." Sort of like the the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. That article doesn't help you figure out who did it. Indeed, the theories contradict each other.

Anarchy occurs when the responsibilities of the government is transferred to individuals. Armies and law enforcement would be replaced by voluntary militias and nightwatchmen. Sounds good, but the problem is that individuals don't like responsibility. People don't want to wake up in the morning and say, "I have a responsibility to do this and that today. I have duties." People rather do whatever the hell they want, and they're not going to let responsibility, culture, or conscience get in their way. They despise self-control and self-discipline.

What happens is that as the government relinquishes its responsibilities, people refuse to assume these responsibility or pick up the pieces, so there isn't any person or institution with responsibilities. This results in chaos, aka anarchy.

Actually, there will be those who want to assume the responsibility that the government relinquished. I mentioned voluntary militias and nightwatchmen earlier. Unfortunately, for the irresponsible to remain irresponsible, they can't be made accountable to militias and nightwatchmen. The irresponsible will grow to resent those who assumed responsibilities. The ultimate freedom that the anarchists will seek is freedom from responsibility.

The irresponsible mob and the responsible militia will adopt an "us vs. them" mentality towards each other. The militia will grow to distaste the mob for their irresponsibility. The militia and nightwatchmen will start say things such as, "If the people were more responsible, then my job wouldn't be so hard." The militia will seek to make the mob more responsible and disciplined, and they might even resort to using force. The militia will turn into an army, its leaders will turn into a government, and they'll attempt to put the mob into its "proper" place.

Is any of what I described any different from Wikipedia's history? I've read the pages in The Cunctator's userspace and I'm visited the nostalgia.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia was an anarchy. In 2001, you could've created an article on anything and gotten away with it. Wikipedia didn't have sysops as we know them today. Wikipedia had a group of volunteers who watched RecentChanges and called itself a militia:

http://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wikipedia_Militia

I'm sure those volunteering to fight vandalism yearned for the able to block IP addresses and accounts and lock pages, and the MediaWiki later provided them with these tools. I'm also sure that there were those who wanted to prevent those tools from being granted to anyone or to grant those tools to everyone. At first, they decided only a few (eg. Jimbo Wales) would have the ability to block, then they decided to give that ability to any community member on the mailing list who asks, but then they decided to be more selective and make the RfA process a pain in the ass.

Wikipedia is an example of an anarchy that became a state.

Yep. One reason why I've always thought of Rand as "warmed-over Nietzsche." Nietzsche would have certainly preached the need for freedom of the inherrently superior master-class to act as masters over those who had willingly decided to act as slaves and believe in slave-virtues ("Give him your cloak and turn the other cheek"), and thus had a slave-mentality. Nietzsche blamed the ancient Jews in the Egyptian captivity for developing these ideas, then Jesus and Peter for pushing them to their logical conclusion. He thought modern Christians were worse than the Jews, and now the epitomy of a slave-race. While admiring modern Jews for their survival skills-- he wasn't an antisemmite. Nor was Neitzsche really any sort of racist-- he thought these cultural ideas were independent of genetics, and could be fought as philosophy merely in the battleground of the mind. He did think that people, by action, breed themselves into being docile and tame as a race, rather like the difference between lions and housecats, wolves and dogs, horses and zebras. But he thought that damage could be undone just as quickly.

The Nazis adopted Nietzsche's language about master-races and slave-races, but Nietzsche is not really responsible for the Nazis. They merely serve as a bad example of what happens when a bunch of people decide they are a "race" and start to oppress other "races" in a Darwinian fashion, without any more morals than animals have. Nietzsche like Rand was an individualist, holding that an individual owes NOTHING to his society. The Nazis, by contrast, were the exact opposite, and were collectivists in every way possible, believing the individual should subjugate himself to the State's need in every sphere, from economic to personal. The Communists weren't as bad, believing in only economic collectivism but leaving some facets of personal life alone (Communists didn't get into your bedroom; the Nazis did). It was the Nazis who came closest to Orwell's 1984.

Had enough yet Petey?

I cannot suppose that. In fact, to suppose such would itself be oxymoronic. "Two universes" makes as much sense as a "square circle".

And that, I believe, is the problem with your analysis. You are treating the universe as though it is something which can be analyzed from the outside. Your argument basically amounts to a secular version of predestination. But there is nothing outside the universe. That's the whole point of the concept.

One can run the same argument at smaller scale, since nobody really thinks it takes the whole universe to determine your actions, even if determinism is true. Einstein (a big determinist) would say that that the relevant part is only the stuff inside your personal light-cone (a bubble X light years across, where X+ 9-months, is your age-from-nothingness). That's a very small bubble on the scale of a universe far more than 13.7 billion light years across.

It doesn't really hurt the argument to make (within the universe) two closed-off bubbles that are as identical as the laws of physics permit, then watch them. Perhaps they are 1000 light years across and 2000 light years away from each other. And perhaps one runs 2000 years "behind" the first one. Then, you can make them even bigger and look at the limit as they get bigger. Does anything change? If the laws of physics permit the creating of people who act so much in lock-step, that you can tell from Joe Blow A what Joe Blow B will do, then you have a situation which is "mechanical enough" to give you philoosphical problems. If the laws of the universe do not permit that, you still have philosophical problems, but in another way. But in neither case can you identify "free will." You either act deterministically, or with some randomness. There is no place for "free-will" (meaning something we ought to justly punish you for) in either case.

balete

I think what all of you are neglecting here is that Jimmy isn't really a Randroid... he's not that "deep". He's just a con who read some of Rand's crap and understood it just enough to be able to sound good at a party while talking up the pretty brunette.

There's no paradox, Peter. There's just a manipulative leech. WP's real birth was with the linux-types who jumped on the bandwagon, not with psychotic fucks like Jimmy & co.

I'm not sure what you mean. You *can't* determine my actions, at least not with an arbitrary degree of accuracy. You can't even determine the starting conditions.

Again you're assuming an omniscient creature which doesn't exist.



And this is supposed to be something that's possible?

If you start with impossible premises, you can "prove" anything.



Begging the question is another way to "prove" anything. You say that if Joe Blow A and Joe Blow B behave differently, it is due to randomness (as opposed to choice). But this begs the question, on top of it being based on an impossible premise.

A lot of this debate is framed within Libertarian assumptions about the purpose of government. The Libs, along with Locke and Hobbes, assume that government fulfills a strictly negative function, i.e. that it is there to prevent us from raping one another, which is regrettable but necessary to keep the peace. People from our generation (which is, at least in the case of Milton and myself and probably several others, the Boomers) tend to be uninterested in the future, assuming that it is a problem for our grandkids. Our theme song is Sha-la-la-la-la-la- Live for today! Now other generations, largely gone and forgotten, thought differently. For them, the most exciting topic of discussion was what sort of nation would we like to have 50-100 years down the road. Generally, as individuals, we have little to say about that, no matter how Bill Gates/George Soros financially omnipotent we may be. Charting a course over the long term is a positive function of government. In a healthy culture, most people want to get in on that discussion.

Yes. But I still like the idea that it's an abandoned Animal Farm where certain pigs eventually began to walk upright.




"God gave me a tail to keep off flies, but I'd rather have no tail and no flies."

-- Benjamin the Donkey

First, it's #2. But anyway, you're sort of assuming that 'the number of equations equals the number of unknowns', i.e. that there's a single solution, which dictates a single actions. A more accurate way of looking at it would be "Comparable people will choose a decision from the same SET when faced with the same facts and having had the same meals and feeling the same way." And if you got indeterminacy, you can bring back free will into it - some variable has to be chosen, so that the other can be solved for. Of course the universe will limit this set to some extent over time and past events will make it evolve. In some cases the set of possible choices will evolve to just a few elements (so yes, "society" can be to blame sometimes - not fully, but partially). But most of the time there's a plethora of possible decisions given the same set of circumstances.

(and some of it is just semantics and essentially unknowable. Suppose we have these two parallel universes and we watch the same person making a choice given identical circumstances. First person chooses A, second person chooses B. Well, at that point we could say "1 chose A and 2 chose B because of free will" or we could say that the difference is due to some kind of unobservable random factor. But there's no way we could really know since unobservable here by definition means unknowable)

When I say stuff like this, there are several WR folks who come down on me like a ton of bricks, for my "unbecoming" characterizations of Jimbo and the fairer sex.

That's pretty much all there is to Randiods. You might be confusing Randoids with the cut-out characters in Rand's stilted prose novels. They are 6 foot 3 ubberman (and they are always men ) whose rippling muscles show even in there expensive suits. They build railroads and dams and skyscrapers that the common man just doesn't deserve. But real Raindoids own greasy porno bookshops and sleasy spam generating websites or sell magazines to poor people who can't afford them. They are the greed glorifying losers who live in basements that walk out into into a fantasy world.


Mr.Wales was the guru of a UseNet discussion group on Rand. Now that ain't much, I'll admit. In fact it's kind of laughable. But is not like real philosophy departments in universities want these cretins. It is pretty much The Bigs of Randoidistan. Just one step below a talk radio show.

I wanted to say quickly here--I have long since lost patience to talk much about Rand's philosophy, since it is so sloppy and self-indulgent--that, in my experience, Wales was extremely well versed in Rand arcana. It's not correct to suppose that he was just a dabbler. He seriously studied the stuff back in the 90s. When I wrote a long "Objections to Objectivism" essay in about 1995 (putting flabby-minded Objectivist doctrines under an analytical philosophy microscope), Wales wrote one of the longest, meatiest replies. If you looked hard enough for them, you might be able to find both my original post and his reply. Possibly on the h.p.o. newsgroup.

I admit I haven't thought too hard about it, but I always found it strange that, when the leftist anarchists started invading Wikipedia, Wales befriended them, and some of the things he has said about Wikipedia do not really seem to square with his avowed Objectivism. Well, no further comment on that...

Objectivism (i.e., Ayn Rand-ism) much more closely resembles libertarianism than "right wing-ism" or conservatism. Conservatism believes in preserving whatever is valuable in traditions, and one of the traditions they generally want to conserve, in the U.S., is Christianity. All this is very alien to Ayn Rand's way of thinking.

Anyway, on the "paradox," I'm not sure that if you unpack it carefully, much of a paradox will remain. The short answer is that open source and by extension Wikipedia involve the free association of individuals under very loose (practically no) rules. For this reason it greatly appeals to libertarian (and thus Objectivist, i.e., Ayn Rand-ian) types. Libertarians generally hate any government more than the minimum. When I declared, "Ignore all rules," they really liked that.

I don't think that most people contribute to Wikipedia for any especially admirable altruistic reasons, but more because they want to assert their egos, and articulating their version of what the world is like is one of the ultimate acts of asserting one's ego. (That would be why so many professors are such egomaniacs.) Ayn Rand might analyze it by saying that the act of doing battle in Wikipedia's "marketplace of ideas" (my tongue is not between my teeth as I say that) is a "selfish" thing to do. But it is, as it happens, altruistic, precisely because we are in fact motivated by a desire to better others. (So I argue, not at great length though, here.) Rand would, again in fairness, probably deny this but say that the appearance of altruism is what we should expect, because our interests are often not in competition and we act together because we mutually benefit thereby.

Several good points have been made here.

I'm not a philosopher and don't play one on TV, but if Larry Sanger says that Jimmy Wales knows his stuff as an Objectivist, I will take his word for it. One certainly can't tell from his various pronouncements and basic attitude towards Wikipedia — bottom up content contribution, disdain for a ruling caste, desire for cooperation and consensus, commitment to non-commercialism, and so on and so forth.

Wikipedia in practice, as has been noted above, is more or less anarchist. Central authority is weak and, whatever one may think about the efficacy of the decision-making process, it is more akin to a Chinese fire drill than a Chinese firing squad.



Objectivism is at its heart an authoritarian ideology. Anarchism is libertarian. So there is a very large unexplained contradiction here, in my view. To my mind, the best explanation is that Jimmy Wales is a very bad Objectivist and a very good Anarchist, his public protestations to the contrary.

And that's fine with me.

t

a) Jimmy Wales is neither a good Objectivist nor a good Anarchist. What he is, apparently, is more of a self-obsessed liar. Such people have no real "beliefs", and are profoundly situationist in their moral outlook.

b) and you are a fool, Mr. Davenport, for following him. Because if there was ever a real crisis, he'd abandon you and all your little Wiki-Friends to the wolves. You are nothing but an exploitable resource to him.

c) adults are attempting to reason something out, and the best you can do is to quote from a Monty Python movie? Go back to Wikipedia and edit some Monty Python articles, little boy. They "only" have 184 articles about it, and of course, it's very very important that Monty Python be properly documented. To hell with philosophy or science or medicine or history, eh?

I think that explains it. The common theme seems to be deregulation.



Just an idea, but reading through all Jimmy’s many comments in the days of 2001-2, it strikes me he was in the grip of a Jesus complex. Terrible hand-wringing when some troll is going to be banned (more rejoicing in heaven when when one sinner repents than over 99 righteous persons, Luke 15:7, ‘rejoice with me I have found my lost sheep’ (15:6) “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”. The parable of the lost troll. Not forgetting the spirit of wiki and all.



There you surprise me. Since you met Wales through the Objectivist newsgroup, I had always assumed you had some sympathy with Objectivism.



I would like to see the essay. I don’t know what the h.p.o. newsgroup is.

He means humanities.philosophy.objectivism.

I can't find the essays Larry mentioned, but here's the post about Wikipedia.


Ah! He was wrong, it was on alt.philosophy.objectivism. Here's the first post.
That newsgroup archive is full of Jimmy's rants--and others attacking him.....

Larry, it's a huge relief that you're not a Rand follower (which was sort of implied earlier). Flabby minded about sums it up... in my experience the guys who can quote book and verse from Rand don't seem to be all that different from the dabblers, so my mistake there.

Here is my favourite quote on Rand, by David Bentley Hart

It was my impression that Ayn Rand was all about how the nasty Bolsheviks were mean to mommy and stole all the jewels, and I wanna, wanna, wanna be the Tsar too.

Or am I missing something?

Doesn't "altruism" involve more than just a desire to better others, and imply a desire to better others to the detriment of oneself?

Also Open Source is only crowd sourced in the sense of bug detecting. For example you will not get an edit button to alter core linux, apache, G++ code, or any other open source product. Certainly you can make your own modifications, 'fork', but you WILL NOT change the core distributed codebase unless the changes have been approved by experts.